Historic Events of Colonial DaysHolland, Rupert Sargent
History
Historic Events of Colonial Days
Holland, Rupert Sargent
United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
John Davenport, the minister at New Haven, preached that Sunday morning
to a congregation that had heard the news of the pursuit of the English
judges. Davenport knew that the king of England had ordered the capture
of the judges and that this colony of New Haven was part of the English
realm. Yet, for the sake of mercy and justice, he urged his hearers to
protect the fugitives who had taken refuge among them. Not in so many
words did he urge it, but his hearers knew what he meant, for the text
of his sermon, taken from the sixteenth chapter of Isaiah, read: "Take
counsel, execute judgment, make thy shadow as the night in the midst of
noonday; hide the outcasts, bewray not him that wandereth. Let mine
outcasts dwell with thee; Moab, be thou a covert to them from the face
of the spoiler." The congregation understood his meaning.
Early Monday morning Kellond and Kirk rode into New Haven, where the
people met them with surly faces. They had to wait until Governor Leete
arrived, and when he did he refused to take any steps in the matter
until he had called the freemen together. The two pursuers, now growing
angry, told the governor flatly that it looked to them as if he wanted
the regicides to escape. Spurred on by this the governor called the
magistrates together, but their decision was that they would have to
call a meeting of the general court.
More exasperated than ever, the two hunters spoke plainly to Governor
Leete. They pointed out that he was not behaving as loyally as the
governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut had; they warned him against
giving aid to traitors, and then they flatly asked whether he meant to
obey King Charles or not.
"We honor His Majesty," answered Governor Leete, "but we have tender
consciences."
The pursuers lodged at a little inn in New Haven. There the governor
went that evening, and taking one of them by the hand, said, "I wish I
had been a plowman, and had never been in office, since I find it so
weighty."
"Will you own His Majesty or no?" demanded the two men from
Massachusetts.
"We would first know whether His Majesty would own us," was the
governor's guarded answer.
The officers of New Haven would not help them, the people were openly
hostile, and so Kellond and Kirk left the colony, without having dared
to search a single house. They went south to Manhattan Island, where
the Dutch Governor Stuyvesant received them very politely, and promised
to help them arrest the fugitives if the latter came to New Netherland.
Then they went back to Boston, baffled of their quarry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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